Commenting on literature as a human record, Goethe once called it “The fragment of fragments: The smallest part of what has been done and spoken has been recorded; and the smallest part of what has been recorded has survived.” I find this observation a very sobering and instructive reminder for a discussion of Chinese poetry under Communist rule. Goethe was speaking of literature in general. And poetry, formally at least, being but one of its branches, is by deduction a fragment of “the fragment of fragments.” Over a decade many things have been accomplished under the régime. Many deeds have been done, immense work of material reconstruction has been completed, and more is in process, on the débris of destruction of comparable quantity; and unfathomable tribulations, pains and frustrations in soul and body are felt and muttered, as well as the hue and cry of zeal and enthusiasm exclaimed among massive crowds.

Speaking in a very general way, youth and age have been taken in traditional Chinese literature as two stages in a continuous development of which the first represents the preparation and the last the goal. Respective values attached to these stages were derived from this concept. In a civilisation where literature, even polite literature, was to a large extent an amateurish pursuit of the scholar-official, this evaluation does not come as a surprise, particularly since it will not be easy to find another civilisation which was as strongly ideology-motivated as was the Chinese. Established attitudes concerning youth and age were thus, in general, accepted and taken for granted also by the poet.

The purpose of this article is to show what Communist literary dictatorship has done to some of the writers, who, though not literary giants, had in the past shown some promise in the art of letters.

Early in 1957, an event perhaps unparalleled in the world of letters was reported from China. A new monthly magazine, Shih-k'an (Poetry), made its appearance in February of that year, its inaugural issue including a collection of eighteen poems by Mao Tse-tung. The appearance of Mao's poetry was not in itself an exceptional event. From ancient times down to recent decades, Chinese statesmen and military leaders have often displayed talent in the writing of poetry; and it appeared that Mao Tse-tung was carrying on the established tradition of a long line of strong rulers in China who desired to impress the world that they were not only victorious conquerors and vigorous administrators, but also accomplished artists.

In less than a decade, collectivisation has come to more than five hundred million Chinese peasants and a large portion of the urban population; it has transformed the socio-economic structure of the nation, causing general repercussions around the world and unascertainable effects in the country. The development of this massive and significant collectivisation movement is reflected, in large measure, in Chinese Communist literature. This article first presents, following a general chronological order, fictional materials reflecting the co-operative and commune movements, and then discusses summarily the artistic and social values of this literature.

First hard estimates of China's food production for 1962, a crucial year indeed, indicate a grains yield increase of from 8 to 10 per cent, over 1961, giving a total of 180–185 million metric tons; a fair enough year, all things considered, but not one promising any real relief from grey austerity, or an early end to the heavy industry pause.

Since the change of political régime on the Chinese mainland in 1949, new values and attitudes have been consciously introduced by the Communist Party. The family institution has undergone a rather drastic alteration not only in form but also in composition, structure, roles of its members and especially in values and patterns of mate selection and marital adjustment. According to traditional Chinese social values, one should marry a person of relatively similar social background consistent with the concept of homogamy discussed by Burgess and his associates. The traditional Chinese sentiment often referred to the marriage of two individuals whose family front doors faced each other as a good match, implying that they had matched family backgrounds in residence, social class, occupations, education, economic status and other values held important in pre-Communist China. The strong emphasis laid by the Communist Party on indoctrinating every citizen in the political ideology of socialism and communism in true totalitarian form covers every phase of his life, including that of marriage. In the course of Communist rule, slightly more than a decade, this political emphasis has often come in direct conflict with the traditional value of social homogamy in mate selection and marriage.

Early in the eighteenth century the European traveller Desideri who made a journey through Tibet and visited Lhasa wrote of the Cong-bo region of south-eastern Tibet that “all the Congo-bo provinces lying to the south of the river [the Tsangpo] march with the people called Lhoba which means Southern People… Not even the Tibetans, who are close neighbours and have many dealings with them, are allowed to enter their country but are obliged to stop on the frontier to barter their goods.”

Hu Feng was a Marxist literary critic who for almost thirty years allied himself closely with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and left-wing groups. In 1955 the Chinese Communists launched an intensive nationwide campaign against him in which he was branded as everything from an exponent of bourgeois idealism to an agent of imperialism and of Chiang Kai-shek.

When the Geneva agreements of July 1954 at Jast brought a measure of peace back to Indo-China, the Viet-Minh régime found itself in legal and recognised possession of that section of the country which lay north of the seventeenth parallel and which is officially known today as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. By then, part of this area, comprising the Viet-Minh's war-zones I, II, III and most of IV, thirty-three provinces in all, had already long been held by Ho Chi Minh's troops and in much of it a semblance of the new order's system of local government had been in regular operation for some years back. In a good deal of the rest, clandestine and fragmented centres of rebel control had perilously co-existed throughout the war with the old administration maintained at great cost by the French authorities. Finally, in many places, particularly the urban concentrations, no appreciable degree of Viet-Minh influence had managed to last out the conflict.

The sudden death of Dr. Hu Shih in Taiwan on February 24, 1962, inflicted on many of the people of that island a sense of irreparable loss. This was not because the present situation in Nationalist China is likely to be much affected by Dr. Hu's passing, for in spite of his great reputation as a scholar, his considerable personal popularity and the prestige of his position as President of the Academia Sinica, he remained a peripheral figure there. He was, however, the last surviving representative of the great generation of revolutionary intellectuals who, nearly half a century ago, undertook the enormous task of creating a cultural “renaissance” in China, and with his death a final link with that optimistic era was forever severed.

In the present context we need not trace in detail the changes Lenin made in Marx's socio-historical views on the eve of and after the revolutions of 1917. Having previously described Lenin's doctrinal engineering of institutional history in general and of Russian history in particular, I shall here indicate only the change in the image of China that Lenin initiated after 1917 and that after his death Stalin and the Chinese Communists completed.

In a previous article I outlined briefly the development of the situation on the campus of Peking University (Pei-Ta) before, during and after the momentous events of the spring of 1957, the period of the “rectification campaign.”

The sequence of events in the past four years permits us to view the rectification campaign as a dividing date in the history of Communist China. The rectification campaign was the culminating point of a period that had seen the post-revolutionary reorganisation of the country, the assertion by the Communist Party of total control over the political, economic and ideological life of the nation and, following a campaign of liquidation of counter-revolutionary elements in the summer of 1955, a sudden “thaw.”

In the months prior to the recent fighting with India, China initiated a new policy in Tibet and towards the Himalayan border countries in order to recover the ground lost—in the case of Tibet—by its previous policies, and—in the case of the neighbouring Himalayan territories—by its suppression of the Tibetan revolt. China's recent successful attacks in the border areas will probably lend added strength to her diplomacy in the border states whatever the immediate reactions of some local statesmen.

The activities and functions of youth organisations are important factors in the life of most, if not all, political movements of the twentieth century. This is true of totalitarian, as well as of more liberally conceived political movements; however, special attention and emphasis has been given to youth organisations in Fascist and Communist societies, where the young people have been forced, pressured, or cajoled into such organisations from an early age and subjected to powerful influences designed to make them faithful and reliable tools or willing helpers of the ruling group or party. Nazi Germany's Hitler Jugend, Fascist Italy's Ballilla, and Soviet Russia's Komsomol are the best known examples of the totalitarian variety of youth organisation. In non-totalitarian societies the young are also given the opportunity to join such groups as the Young Conservatives in the U.K., Young Republicans and Democrats in the U.S., Junior Chambers of Commerce, YMCA, YWCA, Boy Scouts and the like. The difference between youth organisations in the two types of societies, from the Western viewpoint, is that our youth organisations are primarily created for the sake of the young people, who join them voluntarily for the sense of participation and outlet for their energies and talents which such organisations can provide, whereas the totalitarian youth organisations are created for purposes pursued by the ruling political group in those societies, to mould the thinking of youngsters along the desired lines, and to establish an apparatus for control both of the young members and of their relatives and friends. From the Communist viewpoint however, Western youth organisations are politically unsophisticated picnic and camping clubs, which insufficiently prepare young people for the responsibilities facing them in later years and fail to provide them with the ideals for a “correct” political outlook.